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Wednesday April 8, 2009
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Clean diesels have been a long time coming. They offer all of the advantages of typical engines--including stellar highway fuel economy, high torque, and extended cruising range on a single tank of fuel--with emissions comparable to modern-day gasoline cars.
Today at the New York International Auto Show at the Jacob Javits Center, Mercedes-Benz has unveiled the E250 BlueTEC, a mid-sized luxury sedan with a smaller diesel block capable of achieving 28 miles per gallon in the city and 39 miles per gallon on the highway, according to Car and Driver. While those numbers are considerably short of what the Prius achieves, and a few miles off the pace set by the Volkswagen Jetta TDI Clean Diesel, they're pretty astounding for a larger luxury car with 204 horsepower and 369 lb-ft of torque.
Even more interesting: Mercedes is achieving those numbers from a puny 2.2-liter turbocharged four-cylinder diesel engine, mated to a seven-speed automatic transmission. The ratings are just slightly off the pace set by the considerably larger (and thirstier) V-6 in the E320 BlueTEC. As with other BlueTECs, the concept is fitted with catalytic converters that use an aqueous
synthetic urea solution called AdBlue that changes nitrogen oxide to nitrogen gas, the report said. There's no word yet on whether we'll see this car in production. But I'm hoping it's a shoo-in--especially now that diesel prices have fallen back to Earth.
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